2 & 3 July

Monday 2 July 0700  Barcelona – Spain   Currency Euro

After a reasonably rough night at sea we passed a lot of small islands and arrived in the port of Barcelona which is a working port and full of containers and cranes.  

Our tour here was a drive pass and that is exactly what it was, we really didn’t see a lot of the city.  Barcelona held the Olympic Game in 1992 and we saw the huge stadium and also the flame which was lit by the archer with the flaming arrow.

We passed an amazing Cathedral called the La  Sagrada Familia which Barcelona’s great architect Antonio Gaudi designed in 1883 and it is continuing to be built even now and it is a hotch potch of styles now.  It is not expected to be completed for another 50 years.

Antonio Gaudi is the principal architect in Barcelona and his style can only be described as different and you either like it or hate it and I thought that it was absolutely awful and you would have to pay me to live in one of his buildings.  He built a housing development which supposed to have held 100’s of houses and they only sold 2 one to him and one to his backer!  The gardens inside the development are a huge tourist attraction.  I understand this is where the word ‘Gordy’ comes from.

Once again a lovely clean city but unfortunately we did not have enough time to see it properly as we left a 4pm which means we were back in port by 3pm.

 Tuesday 3 July 0700  Alboran Sea.  There is a special channel in the cabin which tells us where we are going and at what speed etc has now broken and so I can’t tell you what is happening and they say that  it will be fixed when we get to Dover.

We had a relaxing day at sea today.  I mentioned before that I had joined the choir and we have been practicing 7 songs and boy do we sound good, over 140 voices harmonising (most of the time), we have no more practices until our performance on the 5^th.

The ship I having another but of sickness, with passengers vomiting etc. and when you are sick you get locked up in your cabin and not allowed out until the doctor gives you clearance.  Talking about Doctors, do not get  sick on board, do not break anything or need any type of treatment because it is so expensive.  A 15 minute session is over $100 and then the Doctor insists of taking all types of tests which of course costs and then the bill is in your room before you come back from the visit.  One of the men at my table needed treatment and the bill was over $10,000 and he had to pay the first $4,000 with his card.

I had mentioned that a number of the passengers had done a lot off travelling the most travelled on the Sun Princess was a couple from Tassie who completed 115 cruises and 1,677 days.